Beginning notes:
(Yes, this is cross-posted from ao3 which is why all the tags are so weird lmao)
I tried to portray Yellow Guy's autism and brain fog as accurately as possible, but since I have neither of these, I know I probably left some things out or got some things wrong-
I did as much research as I could on both of these, but, as I said, I probably missed some things, so I apologize for that-
Also, this is set between Episode 1 and 2 of Season 2, and the characters are just referred to as Red, Duck, and Yellow for writing convenience.
Besides that, I hope you guys enjoy!
It was hard to think.
It had been hard to think for a while, actually.
Distant wisps of memory told of times when his thoughts had more clarity; where they didn't disappear into the fog inside his brain the moment he thought of them. It sounded like a good time to Yellow, and then the wisps were swirled away into the murkiness, giving him no time to try and grab them back and touch upon those reminiscent memories.
It's not like he would try to get them back, anyway. He'd learned his attempts to retrieve anything from the fog were fruitless and just wasted time and energy.
Often, the brain fog allowed him a one-track mind and nothing more. This meant he couldn't hold a conversation while eating at the same time, because he'd just forget what the conversation was about, and Duck would always get angry at him for that. He didn't like making Duck angry, so he'd just finish the conversation first and eat his food afterwards, even if the other two were already done and were already moving away from the table to the TV room.
He didn't like being alone, but he never told them that. It wouldn't matter much to them anyways.
Somehow, he found himself in that exact situation: sitting at the table, alone, with a bowl of half-finished corn flakes drenched in milk in front of him. Well, best to start eating, then.
After he was done, he followed his regular path to the TV room, where Duck and Red were watching Grolton & Horvis. Or was it Horvis & Grolton? Wasn't Grolton the dog and Horvis the man?
Agh, his brain hurt. The thoughts were quickly swished away, allowing Yellow just the tiniest bit more clarity of mind without all those extra thoughts clouding his head.
He continued on, about to leave the kitchen and walk through the doorway to the TV room, when a noise from behind suddenly caught his attention. He turned around, a bit surprised, and saw the noise had come from a figure standing in a mirror that was in a small section off the kitchen.
Odd. He'd never noticed it before.
As he walked closer to the mirror, he saw something strange. The mirror was completely black, except for a figure, just like him, standing there and giving him a curious look. Once he reached it, the person inside the mirror placed a hand on the surface, and he did the same.
They both pulled back, and it was then that Yellow noticed the dissimilarities between them. This Yellow had neat and tidy hair, less Band-Aids, and sharp, piercing green eyes. Their eyes were calculating, but they weren't hostile or wary. They almost looked... hopeful.
"ɔɐn ʎon ɥǝɐɹ ɯǝ?" The other Yellow asked, tilting their head.
Yellow's face scrunched up slightly at the foreign sounds coming from the mirror, before he asked, "Can--can you... uh..."
For once, Yellow heavily minded the brain fog. It pulled and tugged at his train of thought, trying to throw it off its rails, but somehow, in some miraculous way, Yellow pulled back and kept the train chugging along.
"Can you speak like me? I don't know... what you're saying," Yellow asked, grasping his arm with his other hand and picking at the skin until red started to show. It was a nervous habit the others always tried to get him to break, but it calmed him down; it felt as if all the emotions building up inside him were released after peeling skin off his arm, like a crockpot full of steam getting its lid taken off.
The other one seemed to narrow their eyes at Yellow, almost as if they were trying to find something on his face. Then, they said, "⅂ǝʇ ɯǝ ʇɹʎ soɯǝʇɥınƃ."
Other Yellow moved away from the mirror, leaving Yellow with nothing to look at but darkness. Moments later, he reappeared with a piece of paper and a pencil, and after quickly writing something down, he put it up against the mirror.
It read: It sounds like you're talking in reverse.
Yellow huffed, trying to remember what reverse meant. Wasn't it... yeah, it was the backwards thing. But he wasn't talking in reverse. What did they mean?
Other Yellow inaudibly sighed before writing something else down on the paper and putting it up against the mirror again.
I think the mirror distorts what we say.
"Huh," Yellow said. He remembered Red saying that word once: distorts. It meant to... um... change. Yeah, change. He's pretty sure he's right.
After awkwardly standing there for a couple of moments, Other Yellow removed the paper from the mirror and gave him a look before tapping his pencil against the sheet. It took Yellow a few seconds to realize what the other one wanted, but eventually he got it.
He nodded quickly, a bright smile on his face as he rushed away from the mirror and to the TV room. There had to be paper somewhere, after all.
Thankfully, Red and Duck were too busy watching their show to notice Yellow rummaging through all the stuff in the room. Eventually, he found a piece of paper sitting on a random filing cabinet that hadn't been there before; crisp, clean, and ready for use. He fumbled around for a pencil before rushing back to the mirror.
He grinned as he saw Other Yellow still waiting for him, fiddling with the edges of the paper and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. When he saw Yellow approaching, he perked up a bit and waited for Yellow to get closer to the mirror before holding up his paper to his counterpart.
I think we're the same, it read. We're different too, though, which might be why I'm on one side of the mirror and you're on the other.
That... made sense.
Mostly.
Yellow made to voice his questions verbally before Other Yellow pointed to Yellow's own piece of paper. A lightbulb went off in Yellow's head, and he picked up the piece of paper and wrote down a question on it.
How can we be the same if we're
He stopped writing mid-sentence, his thoughts swirling around in his head as glaze came over his eyes. He quickly shook it away, though, because Other Yellow was waiting for him to finish. He didn't like making people wait.
He finished writing the question down and pushed it up against the mirror with it reading: How can we be the same if we're different?
For once, Other Yellow looked unsure. Slowly, he wrote back, I don't know.
Well, that didn't help. Yellow frowned, trying to ponder the question only for his thoughts to be stripped away repeatedly, making him lose what he was even trying to ponder in the first place. When he looked up, though, the mirror had turned back to normal, with it only showing a reflection of himself instead of Other Yellow.
Weird.
"What are you doing down there?" A voice called, and Yellow looked up to see Red and Duck staring at him inquisitively. He looked down at where he was sitting crisscrossed on the floor and back up at the other two.
"I... uh..." Yellow started, trying his best to yank his thoughts away from the daze surrounding his mind. "I was... talking to someone."
"Was it a teacher?" Duck asked, sounding a bit accusatory. He bent down to eye level with Yellow, saying, "Did you have a lesson without us? You idiot, you should have told us!"
Yellow was starting to get a bit frustrated with his inability to tell what he was doing. "It... it wasn't a teacher. It was just... me, I think."
Duck huffed, crossing his arms. "You can't have a lesson with yourself! That's not how it works."
"Maybe you're just confused, mate," Red cut in, kneeling to Yellow's eye level as well. "C'mon, your favorite show is about to air. And throw away that piece of paper while you're at it, yeah? 'Looks too ruined to do anything else with it."
Yellow's brow creased slightly with confusion, looking down at the paper just to realize how largely he'd written on it. With a nod, he stood up from the floor, paper in hand, and after throwing it into the trash bin, he followed the two into the TV room.
The pencil remained on the floor, and a flicker of black seemed to appear on the mirror before fading back to normal.
How very odd indeed.
End notes:
I might write more for this AU, but I dunno tbh
Maybe if there's popular demand???? Idk
Also, here's what Smart Yellow was saying (in order):
"Can you hear me?"
"Let me try something."